[mythtv-users] feature request - mail interface

[George Nassas]

On Jun 21, 2016, at 3:55 PM, Douglas Sargent <dbsargent at gmail.com> wrote:

> on a trip away from home, and wanted to check on the status of Mythtv. Since I don't have the router open, there is no way of checking to see if its alive and recording. So I thought it could be cool if we could email it and get it do do stuff:

This isn’t very hard to do: create a unique email address somewhere, like one of the free email services, and have a regular myth job that polls for new emails and replies with info. I did something like that for a friend who gets tons of private youtube links to videos of nieces and nephews doing cute things. She forwards those to the magic email address and my script picks them up, scans for youtube links, downloads, and sticks them into myth as recordings. That’s more complication than you need but the magic email address and myth polling is the part you’re interested in.

> features:
>     - backend status
>     - upcoming recordings
>      - recording programs

These are trivial. There is already an endpoint in myth’s internal webserver that returns nicely formatted html showing current & upcoming recording activity, machine status, and disk space. It’s easy to send that out as html mail. Andrew’s script is a good approach too.

>      - create a recording schedule 

This sounds difficult. Parsing freeform input is tough and requiring strictly formatted emails is onerous. Plus without listings how do you supply accurate titles etc. Better to create a way to initiate a secure connection to the myth box and use mythweb. But, it would be cool if you pulled it off so don’t let me discourage you.

- George